Hey all!
My name's Will - I'm one of the guys behind Hopscotch along with @oneyenjug.
We built Hopscotch to show you where you've been and where you still need to explore. Earn points as you uncover the Earth and see how you rank against other explorers. It's a fun, easy way to visualize your travels or your everyday commute.
Ideally, Hopscotch makes it exciting to explore that street you've never walked. It's working for me so far :)
Happy to answer any questions!
hey @willydennis! So, i'm a Strut (http://strutapp.com/) user from a while back. People seem to be starting to lose interest. what's your plan to keep this fresh?
@d2burke hey daniel, thanks or asking! we actually considered scattering cash around the map for people to find, but decided against it for now :)
we've also discussed "discoveries" which could be recommended venues, notes left by other users, discounts, multimedia, etc that are hidden around the world and unlocked when you're in that physical space.
what do you think would keep you sticking around?
@willydennis there are a few apps in the space and I haven't seen a lot of traction. I think focusing on the gaming aspects would lead to more stickiness but maybe that's just me :)
@willydennis@d2burke Seems people are really excited about ephemeral as well as anonymous messaging. It would be pretty interesting to see a sort of location-based "Whisper". There are few apps that involve people leaving notes or breadcrumbs at locations and they seem to be gaining at least some traction.
Maybe there's something there.
I don't leave SF's SOMA/Tenderloin enough. Now I must so I can beat @nbashaw in the leaderboard. :P
@willydennis - previously you were working on Hollerback at Techstars. Why did you move onto Hopscotch? That must be a tough decision to move onto something completely different.
@nbashaw is exploring like a mad man! good luck taking him down :)
Love you asking the tough questions @rrhoover, haha! It was definitely a painful decision to move away from Hollerback but I believe it was the right one. Our team looks to build products that are unique and have the potential, if they resonate, to be massive. After looking at our numbers and competition (SnapChat, FB Messenger, iMessage all released similar features within a 2-3 week period) it became hard to see a way to really break through the noise.
In consumer mobile I think one of the most important questions mass market consumers need answered (for word of mouth to really hit) is "How is this significantly different from everything else that's out there?" That question became really hard for us to answer.
So we've been building and testing fresh ideas from there. Hopscotch is just something we wanted to exist. Hopefully there are others who like it too. Who knows, we may have a few more products coming around the bend :)
@willydennis #respect. Consumer social is competitive space and within it, photo/video-based apps are crowded. Even if you make a kickass product, breaking through the noise (press, paid acquisition, app store rankings, etc.) is a challenge.
I love the fog of war metaphor you're playing with here. It's giving me Starcraft flashbacks. How are you measuring engagement and success since this is an app that's mostly used in the background track your movements?
@rrhoover painfully true - though PH is helping with the noise. #brownnosing
engagement is a tough one for the reasons you mentioned, right now we're looking at app opens plus general usage (are people's points increasing steadily? do power users seem to be emerging?).
definitely rough right now but we'll be looking to refine over time as we see how/when people are using.
Good stuff @willydennis. Just downloaded and checking it out. Do you see any fitness applications here? I like how you've incorporated a motivation to explore new areas which can easily be applied to, "hey you, get off your couch and go outside."
@AndyTheGiant ideally some motivation is provided but not necessarily tied to "fitness." there are a lot of great apps that quantify your exercise, we're more interested in quantifying your exploring. definitely a lot of overlap, my favorite way to explore does happen to be biking. maybe fitness will emerge as a core motivation/use case.
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@willydennis@oneyenjug Blown away by this idea. Haven't tried the app yet but as someone who loves to explore, the fog of war seems like a brilliant way to gamify it. Can you tell us what you hope the future of this app will look like?
@tacomanator@willydennis@oneyenjug thanks Drew!
One step at a time, but... we think there's a lot of opportunity around shared public space. As devices become more saturated, battery life gets better, and beacon / bluetooth expands, a ubiquitous digital layer on physical space will start to make sense (wow this sentence is buzz-wordy).
It's hard to tell what that might look like right now, but imagine walking into a restaurant and having access to the menu immediately, being able to chat with people around you, pay your bill - all on a common platform/app. It might be created on the operating system level, or may be something that emerges from a consumer app. It's a big mountain to climb.
At the moment we're just starting excited to see Hopscotch v1 get used and see how it's received by cool people like you :)
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